I have been toying around with Dubai chocolate-flavored things, because chocolate-pistachio is one of my favorite flavor combinations. The chocolate bar is stuffed with a mixture of pistachio cream and toasted kataifi(shredded phyllo dough), which is a loose homage to knafeh, a Middle Eastern dessert that uses those ingredients. Smoky, salty, crunchy, creamy, bitter, and sweet is a very rounded ensemble of tastes, and the fact that you can achieve that with just those two ingredients is why the Dubai chocolate bar went as viral as it did. Speaking of viral, Olympic Village chocolate muffins were another thing that lit the internet on fire during the summer. A rich chocolate sponge with a gooey chocolate center, studded with chocolate chips. There is literally nothing to hate here, unless you aren’t eat chocolate, nuts, or gluten. So with that in mind, I figured I would combine two viral trends into one, and make some Dubai Chocolate muffins!

I will say compared to some of my other recipes, this one is really simple. The muffin batter comes together very quickly, and is mixed with dark and white chocolate chips for a textural contrast. I also used coffee to impart a stronger chocolate flavor, and ground pistachio in place of some of the flour, just to bring in more of that pistachio flavor into the muffin itself. For the filling, it literally is just kataifi toasted in brown butter and then tossed with pistachio cream. I did make my own pistachio cream by pureeing pistachios with cream and melted white chocolate, but using pistachio cream from the jar is perfectly okay here too. The muffins are topped with a thin chocolate glaze, and some pistachios and sea salt for the aesthetic. The one caveat I had was that the recipe only made 6 muffins! I was fully expecting this to make a full batch of 12, but because of how much more you need to fill the muffin tin for a muffin compared to a cupcake, I wound up with just 6 extremely delicious muffins that I inhaled over the span of just 2 days.

Makes 6 muffins:
For the muffin batter:
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup olive oil
1 egg
1.5oz brewed coffee
1 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup ground pistachio
1/4 cup black cacao powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
a pinch of salt
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips
1/2 cup white chocolate chips

In a bowl, whisk together the sugar, olive oil, egg, coffee, and vanilla. In another bowl, sift together your flour, ground pistachio, cacao powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Then toss the chocolate chips through that, just to coat the exterior of the chips with the flours – this will help prevent the chocolate chips from sinking as the muffins bake. Fold everything together to form your batter. Split the batter between 6 lined muffin tins. Bake the muffins at 350 degrees F for 20 minutes, rotating the pan by 180 degrees halfway through the baking process. Allow the muffins to cool before attempting to remove from the muffin tin.

For the pistachio-kataifi filling:
2oz kaitaifi
.5oz brown butter
2oz pistachio cream

In a pan, toast up the kaitaifi with brown butter until the pastry is golden brown and transfer it to a bowl to cool down. Once the kataifi is cool, fold into that the pistachio cream to form your filling. Scoop the filling into 6 balls and then freeze for at least 10 minutes.

For the chocolate glaze:
6oz dark chocolate, in two parts
.5oz olive oil
a pinch of salt

In a double boiler, melt one part of the dark chocolate with olive oil and salt. Take the chocolate off heat and mix in the remaining chocolate to form your glaze. Spoon the glaze on top of each muffin.

For garnish:
Toasted pistachios
Flaky sea salt